


Shifting

by PetitAvocat



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Gen, Mother-Daughter Relationship, flemeth being her usual horrible self to her daughter, morrigan as a kid
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-12
Updated: 2014-11-12
Packaged: 2018-02-25 03:20:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,517
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2606606
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PetitAvocat/pseuds/PetitAvocat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes, for some people, perspective shifts happen very, very early on in life.</p><p><a href="http://makerhavemercy.tumblr.com">MakerHaveMercy</a>, aka <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/users/spicysujamma">spicysujamma</a>, requested a fic of Morrigan's childhood relationship with Flemeth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shifting

**Author's Note:**

> _if you'd like to commission me, send me a message on my[tumblr](http://antivanrogue.tumblr.com). commission info can be found [here](http://antivanrogue.tumblr.com/post/100695864421/antivanrogues-writing-commissions)._

“Have you been listening to me at all, child?”

“Yes, mother.” In truth, Morrigan has been watching the squirrels dart along the tree branches, but she knows by now that to answer otherwise would invite punishment – and her mother has always been so very creative with punishment.

“No, you haven’t,” Flemeth says, her tone bored with a hint of disappointment.  She begins walking back to their home, and Morrigan trots to keep up.  “No matter. You shall be eight years old in just a few days.  Do you know what that means?”

“Do I get a present?” As soon as the words are out of her mouth, Morrigan knows she has made a mistake.  Flemeth stops in her tracks, turning to look at her daughter, wearing an expression that verges on disgust.

“A _what_?”

“I – never mind. I apologize, mother.”

“Have you been spying on the human children again?”

“No, mother,” she murmurs.

“So many lies! Where did you learn such insolence, then, if not from them?”

“I apologize, mother,” Morrigan repeats, voice barely audible.  Flemeth kneels in front of her and takes her by the shoulders.

“Don’t say that if you don’t mean it.  Now, child, you know that humans are filthy and uncultured.  Their traditions are just the same. _We_ – ” she gestures at herself and Morrigan – “we are better than that nonsense.” Flemeth straightens and continues walking. “You will receive nothing as useless as a _present_.  You will, however, begin to learn shapeshifting.”

“Shall I learn to become a dragon, like you?”

Flemeth’s laugh is loud and derisive.  “My, sometimes you are so dull I wonder if you’re truly mine.  No, I don’t think you will ever be able to achieve a dragon.  We’ll start with something smaller.”  She taps her chin. “A mouse, perhaps. Yes, that seems right.”

Their little hut has come back into view.  “Now,” Flemeth says, “make us supper with those herbs and nuts we collected. See if you can’t catch us a bird or rabbit, too.”

“Yes, mother.”

“Oh, and child?” Flemeth stops at the doorway to the hut, looking back at Morrigan by the firepit.  “Don’t forget which parts of those herbs are poisonous. That might go very, very badly for you.”

Morrigan looks down at the bunches of herbs in her bag.  She knows exactly which of these have poisonous stems, which have poisonous fruits, which can be used in their entirety.  And she considers, for just the briefest moment, using the wrong parts.

*

True to her word, Flemeth begins teaching Morrigan the intricacies of shapeshifting several days later.  She hands Morrigan a mouse, the tiny thing’s eyes huge and whiskers twitching and claws digging into her palm.

“Now, tell me what you can sense from holding this creature.”

“’Tis frightened,” Morrigan says.  Flemeth clucks and shakes her head.

“Don’t be daft. Any fool can see that. Close your eyes, and tell me again: what can you sense?”

Morrigan closes her eyes, and at first all she can feel is the mouse’s movements pricking her skin as it tries to escape.  She breathes deeply and tries to let go of her thoughts, focusing her attention on the small life in her hands.

She is suddenly hit with an overwhelming terror.  She gasps, hands reflexively tightening around the mouse, and distantly hears Flemeth say something that – if she did not know better – would have sounded like “Good.”

Her breath slowly steadies out, and she keeps focusing, letting the fear lap at her consciousness like a constant undertow skewing everything else.  As she becomes accustomed to it, she begins feeling…

“Hungry. Tired.  One of its feet hurts.”

“Which one?”

She concentrates. “Left.  Left front.”

“Can you feel what it’s like to have four feet?”

Morrigan expands her attention again.  Something in her consciousness flickers, and for a fraction of a second she feels very, very small.

She loses her balance and stumbles forward.  Her eyes open just in time to see the mouse vanish into the underbrush, and Flemeth roughly catches her arm to stop her fall.

“Not bad. Not particularly good, either, but you did exceed my expectations for a first try.  You may want to sit down if you’re going to forget how to stand, though.”  She holds out another mouse.  “Keep trying.”

So Morrigan spends hours sitting in that clearing, focusing her attention on the mouse’s tiny consciousness.  Over time it quiets in her hands.  She notices several more flickers in her own awareness, and each time tries to keep herself there longer than the last.

By twilight, she opens her eyes and twitches her whiskers and digs her four feet into the earth. It only lasts for a second, and she is breathless and disoriented when she jolts back to human form, but she feels a flush of something that must be pride.

“Don’t let it go to your head.”

Flemeth is leaning against one of the trees.  Her face is in shadow, but it looks like there is the hint of a smile on her lips. Morrigan smiles back, pleased that she has finally met with her mother’s approval – and then just as soon as she’d seen it, Flemeth’s smile is gone.

“What are you grinning about?  Come along, it’s suppertime and you’ve not even begun to prepare our meal yet.”

In the coming days and weeks, Morrigan is able to hold her mouse form longer. Flemeth challenges her, chasing her as a larger mouse and, when she catches her, changing back to a human and shaking her head in disappointment.  “You think like a human,” she says, and Morrigan feels herself deflate, but then redouble her efforts.

As she is better able to act as a mouse would, Flemeth begins chasing her as a cat. Although Morrigan knows it is her mother – or perhaps _because_ she knows it is her mother? – she finds her heart racing and her mind barely coherent, darting among the leaves and roots to evade capture.

And at night, when Flemeth is sleeping, Morrigan practices more.  She tries other animals – luring out a squirrel with some nuts, or a rabbit with some flowers, and holding them in her arms until she can feel their consciousness and understand what it is like to be them. Once, she feels an interruption in her concentration, and opens her eyes to find a large black spider making its way across her foot.  She lets the squirrel in her arms go free, and picks up the spider, and her eyes flash as she re-concentrates.

Never once in months of practice is she able to take the form of anything but a mouse, but she can feel herself getting closer.

Flemeth continues training her, almost every day, sometimes changing into a cat, sometimes an eagle or owl, sometimes a snake – and often, not telling Morrigan which form she will take before they begin their exercise.  Morrigan is able to hold her mouse form for hours now.

But along with that comes a new peril, of losing her human form.

The first time she pushes herself to stay a mouse for as long as she can, she very nearly forgets that she is human.  Flemeth must realize it, because she changes back from a diving hawk, landing gracefully on her feet and snatching Morrigan up by the tail.  It takes some vigorous shaking, but eventually she snaps back to herself, upside-down with Flemeth’s hand around her ankle.

“Don’t be stupid,” Flemeth tells her, setting her down – gently enough, but not _too_ gently.  “You’ll get yourself killed if you try to do these things before you’re ready.”

Morrigan looks up angrily as she dusts herself off.  “I cannot see that you care.”

Again, the words are out of her mouth before she can stop them.  Her mother turns and the look in her eyes is positively venomous.

“Do not pretend to know more than your lot, child.  There are more desires and darknesses in these woods alone than you could ever dream.”

Flemeth does not speak to her for two full days after this.

In the meantime, she practices, pushing herself despite her mother’s warnings. She works on taking a new form, and finds that it comes easier the second time, now that she has become familiar with shifting.

Flemeth comes to her late afternoon on the third day, as she is preparing supper.

“We’ll practice again after we eat,” she says, as though the intervening days had never happened.  Morrigan simply nods, but sure enough, when they have finished their food, Flemeth stands and sets her bowl aside.  “Are you ready?”

Morrigan looks her mother in the eye.  “I am,” she says. And in a small cloud of magic, she turns into a sparrow and disappears, soaring into the sky.

The wind is loud, and whistles by her ears.  But if she were to look back, she would see Flemeth laughing, and if she were to listen very hard, she might hear her mother say, _“Oh, yes, that will do very nicely indeed.”_

As it is, all she sees and hears, up in the clouds, is freedom.


End file.
